5 No-Cook Summer Dishes That Editor in Chief Adam Rapoport Loves

Tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil. Let the dish sit for ten minutes or so for even better flavor. We also do a version of the mozzarella with figs: Let the figs get super-ripe, to the point of crazy, mushy sweetness, chop them up, and toss them with really good fresh mozzarella, olive oil, and basil. It’s this amalgam of sweet and creamy–very unctuous. (Credit: Romulo Yanes)

I eat a lot of pesto in the summer, whether it’s parsley or any herb, really. (Credit: Danny Kim)

For any sort of grilled lamb or chicken, it’s important to have a cooling element like a raita. Samin Nosrat’s recipe from the June 2013 issue Cali-Persian story is perfect. (Credit: Peden + Munk)

In the summertime I’ll put cucumbers in anything and everything. One way I like to eat them is in a faux-pickled cucumber salad: I’ll slice a few cucumbers thinly, salt them, and let them sit in the colander for 20 minutes. Then I’ll toss them in olive oil and lemon juice with a lot of fresh dill and a pinch each of sugar, salt, and pepper. It’s so refreshing. (Tiger Salad, Credit: Peden + Munk)

We turn to Jenny Rosenstrach book, Dinner and a Love Story, a lot when we entertain. She has the minty pea dip–it’s just pureed frozen peas that you melt, plus Parmesan, olive oil, salt–and it’s a cool little thing just to have out with crudites or crackers. Jenny told me she also thins it with pasta water sometimes to make a great sauce. You could also try our Lemony Pea Mash. (Credit: Hirsheimer & Hamilton)

Last summer, my wife and I decided to get all grown-up and rent a beach house. We settled on one in Montauk, on the far end of Long Island. It had a screened-in porch and a big gas grill next to a not-so-big pool, and I suppose you could say that it was close enough to the beach that the drive to the shore didn’t feel so long.

So, no, it wasn’t some Hamptons-esque dream house, but it was a house. And after years of bunking in Montauk motels with damp, sandy carpets, we finally had a place that we could call our own.

We settled into a rhythm. Each morning, I’d cruise into town for an iced red eye and the chance to breeze through the sports page. Some days we’d hang out at the house and I’d throw our son around the pool; others we’d head to the beach and laze away the afternoon. But the best thing about our two-week stay was having a real kitchen.

One afternoon, our friends Will and Gabe stopped by for a swim. You guys hungry? Cool, I’ll make lunch.

I was in my element. I reached into the fridge and grabbed a container of the previous night’s pesto (made from practically a bushel of fragrant local basil). On went the pasta water, and into a makeshift ice bucket (I think it was a metal mixing bowl) went a couple of bottles of rose.

Then, I sliced up some Sun Gold cherry tomatoes from a nearby farmstand. They were so ripe, so sweet, they reminded me that tomatoes are, in fact, a fruit. I peeled open a container of imported mozzarella di bufala–a plump, creamy ball packed in cold, white water. I’d paid about $14 for it. But oh, man, was it worth it. I pulled apart the cheese with my hands, scattered halved tomatoes over the shreds, and added some ribbons of basil, a healthy pour of extra-virgin olive oil, and a showering of Maldon sea salt.

I don’t know if you’d call this “cooking” per se, but I do know that it was the tastiest thing I made all summer. The milky mozzarella juices mingled with the grassy olive oil, and the sweet acidity of the Sun Golds sparked it all to life.

There we were on the screened-in porch: good friends, chilled wine, still-wet swimsuits, and spaghetti with pesto up next. The house might not have been perfect, but that afternoon was.